Here we go again with the beat – come enjoy the tunes that made our year

As a bunch of hip young twenty somethings (hahahahahaha, we’re not, we hardly ever go out) it should come as no surprise that we’re constantly listening to the most cutting-edge tunes (more irony) as we go about our daily business. Fights over the music we play in the studio are many and varied, with some fervently believing they have the best taste in town while others quietly and democratically play songs that everyone wants to hear (thanks James Brown).

In spite of this longstanding musical war, we’ve decided to come together in the spirit of Christmas to bring you a list of tracks that have defined our year. Some you’ll love, some you’ll hate, and Carly Rae Jepsen you’ll love and hate at the same time, but all of these songs have kept us going in 2012; from our bright-eyed start on Monday morning, to the moment we hit the pub on a Friday. So, put your differences aside, turn the volume up to nine (we’re not animals) and dance for me!

Should old acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind, well worry not but take a look at their Twitter timelines…yeah that’s right I took the famous old song and gave it a contemporary twist – so sue me (please don’t sue me). For our final look back at 2012 we’ve collated some of the 140-character reflections on the year’s events and we’ve also asked some friends to sum up their year in a Tweet. And so in the spirit of brevity let’s crack on…

And so with the inevitability inherent in any list like this, we’ve reached the home straight, the last hurrah and the final curtain all rolled into one in the form of this year’s top 10. Ready to find out which articles hit the very heights and in particular which creative can proudly boast of being the top viewed on It’s NIce That in 2012? Then read on friends…Kicking off this final countdown is Dutch artist Berndnaut Smilde as his mesmerising ability to create clouds in art galleries through a combination of heat, light and moisture trickery. They might only exist fleetingly but this article has been consistently popular throughout 2012.www.itsnicethat.com/articles/berndnaut-smilde as the Olympics took centre stage in London, Jamie McGregor Smith gave us first look at his exquisite series focussing on the dilapidated venues used for the 2004 Athens Games. A beautiful, moving series whose eerie quietness taught us something about the difficulties of creating lasting legacies.www.itsnicethat.com/articles/jamie-mcgregor-smith-athens just the day before Jamie photos instead, this supremely silly article ensured a very big week for us in early August. The idea is simple – starting in 1982 five male friends had taken a meticulously recreated self portrait every five years – but the response was massive both on the site and much further afield.www.itsnicethat.com/articles/5-guys-take-same-photograph-for-30-years the evening of July 17 I sat transfixed as Channel 4’s extraordinary Paralympics advert aired for the first time – first next thing next morning I posted it on the site. An extraordinary, courageous and powerful piece of advertising likely to effect lasting social change.www.itsnicethat.com/articles/channel-4-meet-the-superhumans
There’s something bewilderingly impressive about hyper realistic painting when it focusses on a single static object, but that admiration is multiplied exponentially when it is used to depict a writhing mass of gig-goers. Dan Witz wowed us with his Mosh Pits and he wowed you lot as well.www.itsnicethat.com/articles/dan-witz-mosh-pits
There’s a fascination with artworks that results from entirely unpredictable processes and so it is not too surprising to see William Miller’s work so high in this list. After coming across a broken Polaroid camera by chance he started experimenting with similarly flawed devices with haunting, otherworldly effects.www.itsnicethat.com/articles/william-miller far the most recent project to appear in our top 10 but it’s not hard to see why. It is though kind of hard to sum up pithily – essentially photographer Thomas Brown and creative director Anna Burns created an homage to B-movie motifs through umbrellas and fireworks. Seriously.www.itsnicethat.com/articles/thomas-brown-anna-burns-pop-pop-bang creative undertakings require more painstaking patience than Andy Gilmore’s work. His amazing kaleidoscopic illustrations produced in standard Adobe programmes are hypnotic, pulling viewers into worlds where pattern, shape and colour combine to produce artworks that are utterly compelling.www.itsnicethat.com/articles/andy-gilmore-2 Will Sanders has an excellent portfolio full of funny, interesting and arresting visual treats. But one photograph in particular remains one of the most charming pictures I’ve seen all year. Take a flat beach and a blue sky and add loads of massive inflatable animals and you’re onto a (nearly) winner.www.itsnicethat.com/articles/will-sanders
How fitting it is that the top article on It’s Nice That from 2012 is something that so perfectly encapsulates our approach to showcasing art and design. Fusing technical skill with a real sense of playfulness these images of animals’ backs against gharish wallpaper are the work of recent graduate Elisa Noguera. A splendidly worthy charttopper!www.itsnicethat.com/articles/elisa-noguera

Now you’ll already know that for the past nine days we’ve been counting down the top 100 articles on the site this year based purely on the number of the hits they received, thereby ceding our curatorial control in the name of cold, hard stats. But we’ve also asked some of our writers to pick out a post or two which may not have gatecrashed the top 100 but which still hold a special place in our hearts.Up first are Adam Morley and Dulcie Cowling’s surreal yet silly videos, selected by It’s Nice That co-founder Alex Bec. A fantastic cross between surreal messages, candy-coloured visuals and a surprising amount of cress. And Alex also had to nod to the ludicrous amount of times Adam Buxton has been featured on the website this year. Could The Counting Song be the best? Or is it his hilarious music video parody that tickles you? Maybe it’s just too difficult to decide. You tell us. www.itsnicethat.com/articles/adam-morley-dulcie-cowling-very-successful-advertswww.itsnicethat.com/articles/adam-buxton-amazing-music-videowww.itsnicethat.com/articles/adam-buxton-counting-song Rob Alderson decided to go with something a little more serious (for a change) and picked George Butler’s awe-inspiring "location drawing that documented the Syrian crisis this year.

WHAT?! Really? Yes, that is correct, One Direction did not make It’s Nice That’s top ten most viewed articles, shock horror. To find out what else just missed out but still had barnstormingly strong years, scroll away!Well here’s something you never knew you wanted, a pillow that simulates what it’s like for an ostrich to sleep with his little pea-brained head in the sand! Form an orderly queue!www.itsnicethat.com/articles/key-portilla-kawamura-and-ali-ganjavian-ostrich-pillow you seen those folk with picnics queuing in the Barbican for three hours? They are queuing for what can only be described as the immersive event of the year. Simple concept: walk into a really rainy room, and as you walk you stay dry. Amazing!www.itsnicethat.com/articles/rain-room-barbican everyone starts hating Instagram for selling their precious photos of their over-filtered lunches, let’s remember this great hack that showed us live updates from Instagrammers all over the world. Beautifully designed and very satisfying!www.itsnicethat.com/articles/this-is-now you asked the It’s Nice That editorial team who their favourite illustrator of 2012 was, this guy may easily come in top. Can you seriously say that his work reminds you of anyone elses? Thought not. Jordy, we love you.www.itsnicethat.com/articles/jordy-van-den-nieuwendijk-updates fact that a colouring book was the 16th most-viewed post this year shows a lot about you dear audience, and we couldn’t be happier about that. Well done Bellykids for this wondrous, simple combination of heroic actor and staple childhood accessory.www.itsnicethat.com/articles/thrill-murray in the same year that MySpace had a redesign, ad agency Lowe Cape Town decided to create this series of cringeworthy camera-whore portraits. We can all agree that Churchill would never be lame enough to actually do this in real life, but they’re pretty hilarious.www.itsnicethat.com/articles/cam-whoring-self-portraits a gem that was reflagged about eight billion times this year, for good reason! Paper genii Nerhol’s time-lapse cut-away portraits have earned them a place in the paper craftsmen hall of fame.www.itsnicethat.com/articles/nerhol posted a lot of things that you may be more familiar to coming across after accidentally eating mushroom risotto from the Green Fields area at Glastonbury. Trippy visuals totally trended this year and Fabian Oefner is here to prove why.www.itsnicethat.com/articles/fabian-oefner of you haters thought we were wrong for posting this. I mean hell-o! This is one of the most hilarious, witty, and aesthetically pleasing photoshoots of all time. Still don’t like it? Save your cynicism for Twitter you big downers!www.itsnicethat.com/articles/one-direction-for-wonderland okay, One Direction is one thing, but we too are a little ashamed that this nearly got in the top ten articles of 2012. It’s funny how being really, really good at Photoshop can win you brownie points in this day and age, but who cares? These are hilarious. Our favourite? Tom Hanks. Definitely. www.itsnicethat.com/articles/gender-bending

2012 has been a year rammed with unmissable events so unmissable and so frequent that, in fact, it was pretty impossible to get your mitts on them all. Had you braved it and attempted to attend every piece of arty goodness the world over, you’d have surely been forever caught on motorways, trapped in departure lounges fuming about the long delays and endlessly taking in one event only to be thinking the real deal was just down the road!

We’re getting close to the top ten now. I don’t know about you but my heart’s started to race and my palms are sweating. Do you feel it too, the irrepressible rush of excitement? Brace yourself now, this shizz is hotting up!These photos were created using a simple recipe: Brad Pitt is beautiful, Steven Klein is an excellent photographer. Combine the two in equal measure and you’ve got a stellar piece of editorial photography. Bosh.www.itsnicethat.com/articles/brad-pitt-by-steven-klein, like fireworks, possess the inexplicable ability to make the whole of mankind forget itself briefly and just go “Ooooooh!” Float 100,000 of them down a river in Tokyo and you can pretty much guarantee that the response will be HUGE. Which it was!www.itsnicethat.com/articles/tokyo-hotaru-100-000-leds our summer roundup of Olympic design we were slightly worried that people would be sick to death of the Wolff Olins logo and show no interest at all in our extolling of its virtues. But actually it turned out that this much-maligned little beauty looked great dotted around London’s streets and so you all read about it with great enthusiasm. Thanks for that!www.itsnicethat.com/articles/designing-london-2012-logo you love him or hate him Terry Richardson has developed a style of photography that’s all his own. He’s photographed the great and the good of the fashion world, countless musicians and now the president of the United States of America. And hasn’t he made Barack look lovely? Just look at those ‘come hither’ eyes…www.itsnicethat.com/articles/terry-richardson-photographs-obama not short of great places to hang out, but up until August this year it did lack an upmarket cycle club where you could go and watch non-stop road racing while getting your bike fixed and enjoying a cup of coffee. Not anymore though as Brinkworth have designed the stunning (trust me, I’ve been) Rapha Cycle Club.www.itsnicethat.com/articles/rapha-cycle-club feature on the comprehensive branding of London’s 2012 Olympic Games? Of course you read it in your thousands you cheeky bunch of design lovers, you!www.itsnicethat.com/articles/london-2012-brand-identity though we’ve looked at these images many hundreds of times since they hit the site in June (they were included in our Annual too so we’ve seen them on countless proofs) these before and after shots of children undergoing dental surgery haven’t lost any of their power. Incredible stuff from Andy Brown.www.itsnicethat.com/articles/andy-hope-being-brave IKEA’s cardboard digital camera first hit the shelves we suggested it might change the way we take photos. We’re prepared to admit that it hasn’t (their meatballs are better), but it’s still a great idea executed with typical IKEA flair.www.itsnicethat.com/articles/ikea-ps Paralympics were responsible for some of our favourite creative content this year and Mark Zibert’s advert for Canadian television is no exception. Shot in a single take it’s got everything you require from a great bit of film.www.itsnicethat.com/articles/mark-zibert-canadian-paralympic-advert and Schumm have had a pretty stellar year creating some superlative editorial imagery. Their abstract erotica for Baron was an absolute knockout, but so too were these trippy portraits for Hector magazine. Be warned though, staring at them for too long seriously distorts your field of vision. www.itsnicethat.com/articles/blommers-and-schumm-hector-magazine